Greed, Landlords and the Toothless Local Government

My first place in London was a studio flat in Shepherd’s Bush. I say studio flat because it was in fact the living room and kitchen of a 2 bedroom flat that had been converted to include a bathroom. Two other households lived in what would have been the original flat with me. Their studio flats even smaller than mine.

Now, Rosemarie and I are in our own place. Not after leaving another less than ideal landlord. Because of almost having to take the last one to court, I ended up researching a lot about tenancy rights. What happened at the place I lived was very illegal. It breached at the very least planning regulations.

So at the end of last year I phoned Hammersmith & Fulham local council to make a complaint. They did take me seriously, and issued a case number. Then called, yes called, the tenancy agency to ask them if everything was OK. Obviously, the landlords did not just roll over and fess up.

My case got closed, because it was deemed to be not a problem. I rang the council back and explained in more details why I thought there was a problem; So, they reopened the case. This time someone visited. Apparently, there is now a shared living space with shower rooms. Case closed.

While I am glad that the tenants in that one property have it better than before, or at least may be in less danger of burning to death in a fire, I am still upset. The tenancy agency own hundreds of properties around the city. London is notorious for rent and no wonder. When landlords illegally subdivide flats so they can charge unreasonable rates to single properties there is a problem. It’s more the worse when local government are not able to effectively find and clamp down on the practice. While my initial case may have caused on property to be revamped, how many others are currently being split up into over-priced, sub-standarded death traps?

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